“There are two great men in history whom he [Wittgenstein] somewhat resembles. One was Pascal, the other was Tolstoy. Pascal was a mathematician of genius, but abandoned mathematics for piety. Tolstoy sacrificed his genius as a writer to a kind of bogus humility which made him prefer peasants to educated men and Uncle Tom’s Cabin to all other works of fiction. Wittgenstein, who could play with metaphysical intricacies as cleverly as Pascal with hexagons or Tolstoy with emperors, threw away this talent and debased himself before common sense as Tolstoy debased himself before the peasants – in each case from an impulse of pride. I admired Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, but not his later work, which seemed to me to involve an abnegation of his own best talent very similar to those of Pascal and Tolstoy.” -Russell

Really interesting. I think a lot of academia feels the same way, though not in the same words, as Russell does. I wonder if Russell ever thought deeply about why Wittgenstein “debased himself before common sense” instead of just “impulse of pride”. He writes the Tractatus, then rejects it for the common. Russell recognized Wittgenstein as a genius. Did he recant that claim?

What I would give to see a conversation between these two after the Investigations was written. I feel like it would represent Wittgenstein’s conversation with the academy as a whole, who have mostly written off his later work as something which came forth inexplicably and never should have seen the light of day.

If this seems surprising, perhaps it is because we forget that we learn language and learn the world together, that they become elaborated and distorted together, and in the same places.

-Cavell

I find that these two quotes complement each other. I have at multiple times tried to explicate to my peers what these quotes are trying to say, but I have found it is really hard. The truth of the statements seems so overwhelmingly obvious to me that I am left dumbfounded when someone tries to refute them. It is like Sidgwick dealing with someone that doesn’t care to be moral. Sidgwick says you drop the conversation right there, since there’s nothing to be done with an ethical theory for someone who doesn’t want to be moral.

Analogously, I don’t understand how you can study philosophy seriously without understanding the intimate relationship between our words and the world. We understand them together and in the same places. We also become confused about them in the same places. When I talk about my words, I just am talking about the world, because they cannot be separated.

For someone who doesn’t see this, it becomes almost impossible to convince them. It is a nice piece of philosophical befuddlement when something seems overwhelmingly obvious only to you. It must be what madness feels like.